UK may have freed fighter

BRITISH security services are working to identify an English-speaking fighter who took part in the Algerian hostage crisis, amid fears he may have been freed from British custody.

An Algerian hostage who escaped the desert gas facility last week told French newspaper Le Monde one of the militants spoke perfect English.

Brothers Lamine and Ibrahim Adam were born in Algeria but grew up in east London and became radicalised in the late 1990s. Both were arrested in 2006 as they were heading to Syria.

The Adam brothers were placed under control orders but absconded in May 2007. Ibrahim was killed in US drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal belt in 2011.

The whereabouts of Lamine, now 32, are unknown.

Lord Carlile, QC, Britain's independent reviewer of terror legislation until 2011, said: ''If there is a fluent English speaker among the hostage-takers then there is a reasonable possibility he is known to the British authorities. If he is somebody who absconded from a control order then that would obviously be a matter for concern.''

Another Algerian detainee, known only as K, voluntarily returned to Algeria in 2007.

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